


Forest Fire

by CateWolfe



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Essentially OC-centric, Gen, Legolas has eleven older siblings and a living mother, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Tauriel but not quite, Third Age, Understanding will be enhanced by a basic knowledge of Silm-lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-10-23 11:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17682410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CateWolfe/pseuds/CateWolfe
Summary: A seven-year-old elf gets lost in the garden— and ends up in Mirkwood. After hitting her head hard enough to forget her home address, now she has to learn Sindarin, get used to the name her caretakers give her, and figure out why nobody can stand to look at her hair. And maybe, once she's big enough, she'll be able to find her way home. Updates on Saturdays.





	1. Prologue: Amnesia

PROLOGUE 

Amnesia

-

The trees were so _wild._

I did like wild trees on occasion, but the trees here were supposed to be nice tidy trees with stone paths between. Maybe I had wandered out of the garden during that dizzy spell.

My opinion on wild trees, I decided, was mostly dependent on whether Mama and Papa were with me. And on whether the sun was up. Mama and Papa were not with me, and the sun was not up, so I did not like wild trees at the moment.

Where _were_ Mama and Papa? They were supposed to come get me once they were done talking to all the other grown-ups. I shivered. It was getting cold.

Maybe I had gotten lost. I sat down on the cold dirt and shivered some more. Mama and Papa would find me soon. They just had to.

Everything was really quiet, but sometimes I thought I could hear howling, or scratchy sounds like something strange walking through the forest. Were there wolves in this forest? Or worse, those horrible not-wolf things in the stories… 

The scratching sound started again. What could it be? Another elf? A squirrel? A spider?

Ordinary spiders made no noise at all, so if the scratchy noise was a spider it had to be a really big spider. Had Ungoliant come back? Those were the _most_ frightening stories— the real thing had to be even worse!

I had to warn Mama and Papa! I leapt to my feet, making sure to brush all the clods of dirt off my dress. I started to run, but my foot slipped on a rock and I fell.

As I scrambled to my feet, brushing the dirt off my dress _again,_ I remembered that I did not know which way Mama and Papa were. I turned in a circle, but could not see any end to the forest.

Wait! If I climbed the tallest tree, I could see over the rest of the trees, and I could see the lights where all the people were! That would work. I ran to a tree, and jumped up to catch hold of the lowest branch, but it was too short.

But! Over there was another tree, and it was littler and younger, and I could reach its branches.

I climbed to the top of it, but the top of the little young tree was still far too low to see over the old tall trees.

But to my left there was a branch that came oh-so-close to my little tree, and perhaps I could leap to it, for it was attached to an old, tall tree, and I could climb up it and see all the way home.

Slowly I walked out close as possible to the large branch— the little tree’s bark hurt my feet— and I breathed deeply, deeply as I could, and jumped—

And fell—

And fell—

And fell— and then darkness.

Fin


	2. Chapter One: Something Like a Hospital

CHAPTER ONE 

Something Like a Hospital

-

So then—

 _Yes,_ I know I said I couldn’t remember exactly what happened, but I made some educated guesses to start the story effectively! Nobody wants to hear a story that starts with somebody waking up and not remembering anything.

 _Thank_ you. See, he agrees with me.

So _then,_ I woke up.

I was in a room. All the walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up and looked around. I was in a bed far too big for me. My hair was still in a braid, but it had gotten loose and fuzzy.

Some grown-up was in the room, behind something like a portable wall that looked like it was woven out of lots of little strips of wood.

“Excuse me,” I said to the grown-up, “do you know where my parents are?”

The grown-up stood straight up quicker than anything I had ever seen. Her hair was brown (which I had seen before), but it was a strange, greyish brown, like dirt covered with a film of dust. Not at all like the redder browns I was used to. She babbled incoherently about something— it _almost_ sounded like she was saying words and sentences and things like that, but not quite. Like a baby trying to learn to talk.

Maybe I had just startled her. “Excuse me,” I said again, “do you know where my parents are?”

She kept babbling. 

Evidently she had been damaged in the head. I would have to go find someone who could talk if I wanted to get back to my parents.

I got out of bed and went over to the door. My head hurt a little, but not enough to worry about. Most likely it would go away after I found my parents and drank some water.

The grown-up babbled more quickly and loudly, coming toward me like she was going to pick me up. 

I pulled the door open and ran through— something was very wrong with that woman. She shouted, and chased after me. I ran faster.

There were people outside, and they all looked surprised to see me. I ran through the crowd, through all the little spaces-between-people that were just wide enough for me. Surely the grown-up would have to slow down to get through without knocking anybody over.

I ran, and ran, and whenever I had to choose between a big room and a small room I chose the big room. There would be more people there, and eventually somebody would see why I was running and help me.

Soon I was in a very big room indeed. The people were more spread out here, since there was so much space, so I just started running in the closest thing to a straight line I could. I turned my head around to see how close the grown-up was— too close! I kept running, and—

Ran into something, and fell down.

The something was another grown-up. He was taller than the one that had been chasing me, but not as tall as my papa. He started talking, but said nothing I could understand. A feeling of congestive dread started to settle in the back of my throat— it sounded exactly like that mad-woman’s babbling.

The grown-up that had been chasing me caught up to me, and started talking to the taller one. She sounded almost like she was apologizing for something. The taller one said something back, and they went on like that for a little while.

They were looking at me, which I did not like. I started slowly backing away from them.

The shorter grown-up made an angry face and grabbed my arm.

“Get away!” I shouted, and I tried to kick her in the legs with both of my feet at once.

It did not work. I fell down again on the hard floor, pulling her down with me. She let go a little, though, so I kicked her again to make her let go all the way.

That did not work either. She stood up, angrily, and started dragging me back to the room where I had woken up, hissing at me in her babbling not-language.

I grabbed her arm with my free hand, and pulled my face closer to _her_ hand. I would bite her hand, she would drop me, and I would run away to find some people who could talk.

“Stop,” said the taller grown-up, with a strange accent.

“You can talk!” I said. The shorter grown-up dropped me, and I fell down _again._ She still looked angry, but there was some shock mixed in now, and she took a few steps away and stood there.

“Thought thou I could not?” asked the taller grown-up. Now I knew what he sounded like! He sounded like an old person being formal. Though there was another accent too. A little like a sailor’s accent, maybe, but I had only ever heard that once or twice.

“Yes,” I said. “Who are you? Why did you not talk before now if you could?”

“In thy hearing I have said much,” he said, “to answer thy second question.”

“It only counts as talking if you say real words,” I said. “But could you answer the first question before we talk about the second?”

“I am the king,” he said.

That was a lie and I knew it. The king came over to dinner sometimes, because my papa knew him, so I had seen him. The king was taller than this grown-up, and his hair was a different color, and he talked differently, and all sorts of other things. I said all that, and then said, “...and if you knew who I was, you would have said something different. My grandmama is very important, you know, so that makes me important too.”

“What is thy grandmother’s name?”

“Grandmama, of course! I just told you.”

“Dost thou know thy parents’ names, then?”

“Mama and Papa!”

He went very quiet for a moment. “Dost thou know thine own name, at the least?”

“Mama and Papa call me Meldë,” I said.

“Is that thy name?”

“Probably,” I said. “Other people call me other things, but Mama and Papa always call me that.”

“What things do other people call you?”

I shrugged. “Too many things to remember. I could tell you about Mama and Papa’s horses, though! They said they would find a lovely red one for me when I am old enough, just like Papa’s, and that way all four of us will match, and—”

He had stared blankly into the distance as I talked. After the part about me and Papa and Papa’s red horse and my hypothetical red horse all matching, he said something short and angry in the babble-language, then switched back to real words to say, “That is enough. I thank thee for thy words.”

“You are very welcome,” I said, curtseying like Mama did, “but where are the other people who can talk? I have more words, and they are no use without someone to hear them! And understand them, of course. Words are no use if nobody understands them, you know, and—”

“Lindwen can speak,” he said, waving a hand at the short, angry grown-up. “Near all in this kingdom can.”

I giggled, and now that someone who could understand me was around I said what I had thought before. “Near all? They talk like babies.”

“How so?” he asked quietly.

“They just babble,” I said, “like babies trying to—”

“I see,” he said, even though I had not finished. He was staring very hard at something to the left of my head. He almost sounded angry again. I turned around to see what he was looking at, but somebody must have taken it away, because I only saw people like the ones that had been walking past the whole time, and he had not gotten angry at _them._

But he _was_ a grown-up, and they never made sense. He had interrupted me three times, which was rude, but if I pointed it out he would act as if _I_ were the rude one. “Thank you for seeing,” I said, because it seemed like a good thing to say. I did not say anything else after that. I was hoping he would go away.

The angry grown-up had walked up behind me while I was talking to the grown-up who could talk but was not the king, and she grabbed my hand again, far more tightly than she really needed to. I twisted my face up tight and put my teeth together to keep from shouting, because I did not want her to know what I was planning to do, which was bite her hand and kick her legs and run until I found some _sensible_ people who could talk.

The grown-up who could talk but was not the king said something in the babble-language, and the angry grown-up let go of my hand enough that it stopped hurting.

I thought about this. Even though the grown-up who could talk was not the king, the people who could not talk must have thought he was a _little_ important. The angry grown-up did not seem like the sort who would do something somebody told her to do unless that person was important. Of course he could not be _very_ important, or I would have seen him talking to Papa or Grandmama.

Biting a grown-up’s hand, kicking her, and running away did not sound like the sort of thing _any_ grown-up would like, and it sounded even less like the sort of thing a slightly important grown-up who thought he was the king would like. I would wait until he was out of sight before biting the angry grown-up’s hand, kicking her, and running away.

I waited. The angry grown-up took me one way, and the grown-up who could talk but was not the king walked the other way. In a few moments I could not see him at all, even though he was taller than most of the people who could not talk.

My time had come. I bit the angry grown-up’s hand and kicked her legs. She screamed, and she dropped my hand, and I ran.

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because this is certain to come up: My main character is not Tauriel as she appears in the latter two Hobbit movies, but she is very much Tauriel- _inspired._ The basic germ of this story began as my Silmarillion-obsessed younger self's attempt at reconciling a red-haired Captain of the Mirkwood Guard with the predominantly silver-haired and dusty-brown-haired Mirkwood that I had always imagined beforehand. After a few editing passes to un-convolute the plot, I had what you see today.
> 
> So is the-main-character-who-has-not-been-named Tauriel? Yes and no. She will (stop here if you care about spoilers) eventually get a very similar name, and hit a number of the same plot beats. However, she is not Silvan, she has an entirely different personality, and there will be no romance with either Legolas or any of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.


	3. Chapter Two: Escape

CHAPTER TWO

Escape

-

I ran, ducking between people and turning left and right into different hallways to confuse the angry grown-up. Sometimes I would find stairs going up, and I went up those stairs. Going up all the stairs might make the angry grown-up tired, or at least I hoped it would, and eventually I would get to the roof, or a high window where I could get out of the building and climb down the walls to find some normal people.

I ran through halls with wood-colored walls, halls with white walls, halls with blue walls. Halls with lots of people, halls with no people, halls with a few very bored-looking people. But I did not stop running, even though my legs hurt and my head hurt and my throat hurt from breathing so quickly. If I stopped running, I would be in a hall long enough for people to notice me.

Halls were  _small,_  that was the problem. I needed to get into a big room, so the people would be spread out too far to bother themselves with me.

Ah! There was a door over there, and it looked quite big enough for me to run through without being noticed.

I ran. The door got closer… closer… closer…

Through! I was through. And… there was a massive room, and a bigger door at the end of it— But there were  _trees_  through that one! Surely I would be able to get away once I was in the forest.

I ran. There must have been hundreds of people in the big room, and every one of them turned their heads to look at me as I ran by. Did I look so strange?

I did vaguely remember looking more like Father (and, by that, Grandmother) than I looked like anybody else back home, but nobody  _stared_  about it.

Oh, no— Somebody was running up behind me— not just staring, but chasing me. I ran faster, so fast that I nearly lost all my breath. My chest hurt from gulping in air with every jarring step.

The new door got closer, and with it the trees, and outside, and freedom, and people who could  _talk—_

But the angry grown-up was surely getting closer, and I was getting tired. As soon as I had found a town of normal people I thought I would just about fall down and sleep for three days.

I kept running, and running, and running, and just when I was starting to think there was nothing else in life  _but_  running— I was out! The air smelled a good deal nicer, and when I looked up I could see little bits and pieces of sky between the leaves.

When I looked back, though, I could see the angry grown-up, and quite a few other people she must have convinced to help her. They looked angry too, and were probably less tired. I kept running.

This went on for what felt like a very long time but was probably not that long. Every few moments I looked back to see what the angry grown-up and the people she had convinced to help her were doing, and nearly every time they had gotten closer.

The frequent back-looking was my downfall— I tripped. And fell. Down. I might have hit my head again, now that I think about it. It would surely explain why everything for a while after that got so fuzzy, and furthermore it would explain why I fainted.

I woke up in the room whose walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up, and immediately flopped back down again. I shut my eyes tight, but the spinning colors just got brighter.

My head hurt terribly— You know, I really think I had hit it again when I fell. That explains a lot of things.

For example, it explains why everything looked so hazy, and why there always seemed to be a cluster of concerned grown-ups. I did not see the angry grown-up during that time— probably a good thing. Even through the haze I might have tried to tackle her.

But eventually the world got un-hazy, and I was stuck listening to all sorts of jabbering I could not understand.

I tried to learn it. There was nothing else to do. Some words were easy to figure out— water, food, time to sleep.

But when all the grown-ups started talking more quickly than I had ever heard, and they gave me back my party dress, I had no words to ask what was going on.

Fin


	4. Chapter Three: The King

CHAPTER THREE

The King

-

 

I was at least glad to have  _ my _ dress back. The other dresses they had given me were as crudely sewn as they were roughly woven, and even if I liked dark brown for dresses I did not like the suspicion that a thousand other girls my size must have worn something before I did. My dress was  _ mine, _ and no one else’s, and it felt nice to wear.

 

The angry grown-up had come back, which I was  _ not _ glad about. She looked angrier than ever, and when she grabbed my arm to drag me wherever she wanted me to go, the bruises she had given me last time started hurting again. Furthermore she walked so quickly that I had to run to keep up.

 

I considered dropping to the floor and making her carry me, but that was very much something a baby would do. To that depth I would only descend under truly dire circumstances.

 

Eventually we got to a very large door and stopped. After an incomprehensible conversation between the door’s guards and the angry grown-up, the guards opened the door and let us in.

 

Inside the room were quite a lot of people. The angry grown-up hissed something at me that I could not understand, dropping my arm only to grab my shoulder tighter than a wolf’s bite.

 

Now I would have bruises there too. I would have shouted at her if so many people had not been watching.

 

A faint memory wormed its way out of my head.  _ Don’t look at them, _ I remembered somebody whispering.  _ Eyes forward, head up, just keep walking. _

 

Whoever had put that into my head, it was far better than nothing. I straightened out my back from the defensive curl that the angry grown-up always inspired, stretched out my neck as far as it would go, and looked down to the end of the room, directly into the eyes of —

 

The grown-up who thought he was the king.

 

I sighed through my nose.

 

The angry grown-up started walking. I spent a few steps stumbling, but eventually figured out the right way to walk to keep up with her— not quickly enough, though, to avoid everybody seeing how bad I seemed to be at walking.

 

Getting to the end seemed to take forever, but I did not even glance to the sides where at least two dozen people sat watching. The grown-up who thought he was the king was at the end, of course, sitting on a chair that was probably supposed to look like a throne. There was a lady there, too, on exactly the same kind of chair. Standing on the ground was a very nervous-looking fellow holding a book.

 

“Hello,” I said, because none of them seemed like they were going to say anything.

 

“Hello,” said the grown-up who thought he was the king; he still had the strange accent.

 

“Is there any particular reason,” I asked, “why I have been brought here?”

 

“Fascinating!” said the nervous fellow. “Absolutely fascinating!” He turned around and talked at the couple in the chairs for a few moments.

 

“If something is fascinating I would like you to tell me about it,” I said. “Now that you have told them I feel very left out.”

 

“You speak it like a native!” he said. “No stumbling whatsoever over the stranger bits of grammar— quite a thing to see. Or hear, rather— or maybe behold, which works for both.”

 

“Well!” I said. “I never heard anybody speak any other way before I had the misfortune of coming here. I should hope I do not stumble.”

 

“Where do you come from, then?”

 

“Father and Mother and Grandmother and I live in a house with big walls a day’s ride away from the city,” I said. “And a few other people who do not like the city have built houses near ours, but none of them are as pretty, and none of them have stables as big as ours. Father and Mother have two horses each, you know, and Grandmother has  _ sixteen, _ but she only rides two of them because she says she’s keeping the rest for some people who took a long journey and are coming back any day now, and—”

 

“I suppose you like horses,” said the nervous fellow. “But tell me, do you know the name of the city of which you spoke?”

 

“No!” I said. “Why would I want to? Of course it is a very pretty city from a distance, but once one gets up close the people are very unpleasant.”

 

He looked very unhappy about this, and turned around to communicate with the people on the chairs again.

 

“What is that language that you are all speaking?” I asked. “If no one knows anything else I will either have to learn it or get out of here very quickly.”

 

He seemed at this point to be existing in a constant state of unhappiness. “It is called Sindarin by most,” he said. “I suppose you will have to learn it— unless you go to the places where Silvan is still used, but then you will have to learn that. Unless you know it already?”

 

“I hardly know what any of  _ this _ means,” I said. “But tell me, why will I  _ have _ to learn your language? As soon as my parents know where I am they will come get me.

 

“I do not think they know where you are,” he said.

 

“They are  _ looking,” _ I said. “And once they have found me I will be able to get out of here. Now will you please get to the point of why that  _ person—”  _ here I pointed at the angry grown-up— “has dragged me all the way down here?”

 

Now he looked rattled as well as unhappy. “Well,” he said, “we have had people going to all the elven settlements asking if anyone has lost a child about your age, and—”

 

“My parents said yes, so I get to go home?”

 

“No,” he said. “We could not find anybody. You will have to stay here.”

 

I would not believe it. “I will not,” I said, crossing my arms. “They must not have looked hard enough. Our town is not a very big one, of course.”

 

“I am sure they looked very hard,” he said. “In any case it is not up to you. You will stay here.”

 

“I will leave,” I said, “and you need not even think about me ever again. No doubt you will all be much happier.”

 

This apparently shocked him back into his native language, and he chattered back and forth with the grown-ups on the chairs for a while before turning back to me. “Leave!” he said. “Small as you are! Absolutely not. A common wolf would bowl you over before the spiders even noticed you.”

 

So this place was in the middle of a forest. Drat. “Hm,” I said, in an attempt to save face. “I suppose I will stay a few years, then, if this place is so overrun with dangers.”

 

“I surely hope you will!” said the translator— the king through him, technically, though the difference in their tones of voice made me think it was a loose kind of translation. “You should keep learning our language, and we will find someone for you to stay with in the meantime.”

 

“After these past few weeks,” I said, “I could be content with anything.”

 

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many apologies for the lateness- I have a backlog now, so it shouldn't happen again for a few weeks at least.


	5. Chapter Four: Ma'am

Chapter Four  
 

Ma'am  
  


-

 

“Be good,” said Lindwen as she dragged me along. “People here don’t like children who bite them.”

 

“I only bite people who are mean to me,” I said, “so if I bite them you may be sure they deserved it.”

 

The people who worked for the grown-up who thought he was the king had found a childless couple who was willing to keep me fed and clothed until I was grown. We might even, they hoped, end up liking each other.

 

“Some have not deserved it,” she said, and dragged me along faster, near tearing my arm out of my shoulder.

 

“Slow down!” I shouted. “Is the fashion here for children to have their arms ripped off?”

 

“Don’t shout so,” she said, “somebody might hear.” But she did, at least, slow down.

 

“This kind of thing,” I informed her, “is why I am considering biting you again. Are you so mean to everybody?”

 

“I am only mean to people who are a nuisance to me,” she said mockingly, “so if I am mean to them you may be sure they deserved it.”

 

“Whatever did I do to make myself a nuisance?” I asked, my nose getting hot with indignation.

 

“You were born,” she said, “and then you were found in the forest, and then the guards took pity on you, and then the master of the healers took pity on you, so then _she_ set me to the care of the most troublesome child in the world.”

 

“None of that is my fault,” I said.

 

She interrupted me. “And if you had not been born or found, then I would not have had to sit up seven days and seven nights waiting for you to wake up. And furthermore you would not have run away from me when I was only trying to help you, and you would not have bit me when I was only trying to take you back to your room. Or any of the times after that!”

 

“Well!” I said, and I would have told her why she was wrong, but she halted in front of a certain house’s door and interrupted me again.

 

“Stop it,” she said. “We are here, and if you do not make a good impression on these people you will be stuck with me for the foreseeable future, and I think neither of us would like that much.”

 

I had even more to say about that, but she knocked on the door, and as much as I wanted to show her why she was wrong I wanted even more for these people to like me. I did not, as I am sure you will understand, want to be stuck with Lindwen.

 

A lady opened the door. She was shorter than Lindwen, and her face was thinner, but she had longer hair, and did not keep it in a braid like the healers usually did.

 

“Good morning, Gaeren,” said Lindwen.

 

“Good morning,” said the lady who must have been Gaeren. “Are you here from—” She stopped, and stared at the top of my head. “I suppose you are,” she said absently.

 

“I hope your mind has not changed?”

 

“No, just…” She trailed off, still staring at me, but then looked back at Lindwen, her voice brightening. “Well! You must come in. I fear Naithion is not home, but his mind had not changed when he left this morning.”

 

“Has harvest come early?” asked Lindwen, stepping into the house and pulling me with her. It was a small house, with a small main room, but when we were still outside I had seen signs that they had recently built another room onto the back.

 

“No,” said Gaeren, “but we have had to replace some laborers, and have also had the good fortune to be able to hire more, so he thought it would be best to give our supervisors some help.”

 

“That is glad news,” said Lindwen, and she looked like she might have said more, but Gaeren said something before she had the chance.

 

“Does the child have a name?” she asked, periodically darting her eyes at the top of my head, and to the sides of it, but never at my eyes.

 

“Not yet,” said Lindwen. “She remembers only an old pet-name, and we thought to leave the giving of new names to her caretakers.”

 

“She is so quiet,” said Gaeren. I bristled, and cast aside all my real parents’ admonishments against interrupting, and would have proved her wrong but for Lindwen catching the direction of my thoughts and threatening silently to stomp on my foot.

 

“Yes,” lied Lindwen, “and docile, too. You and Naithion should be able to handle her quite easily even without any experience in the matter.”

 

Gaeren sighed at that last part. “That is good, I suppose— but wait. I had heard that she bit a caretaker of hers, soon after waking. To my ears, if you will forgive me, that speaks little of quietness, and even less of docility. No— it was more than once— but that is even worse—”

 

Lindwen forced out a laugh, drowning out the end of whatever Gaeren had been going to say. “Ah, children! You know how they are. Little better than animals when provoked, even by something that you or I would understand to be quite small.”

 

“I beg your pardon!” I said, but the sheer amount of anger coursing through my veins turned it far too squeaky for anybody to take me seriously.

 

“We hardly mean it,” said Gaeren, laughing a little. It sounded rather patronizing, or at least I thought so.

 

Lindwen laughed too, and asked, “Will all be well if I leave now? I have other duties, and must attend to them…” She had, I realized, been slowly edging toward the door for a good part of the conversation. Though she started out close enough to me that her threats of foot-stomping were clearly not vain, she now stood a good two paces away from me.

 

“Oh,” said Gaeren. “Yes, yes. You can go.”

 

She did, and hissed into the air as she left: “Good _riddance,”_ which I do not think I was supposed to hear.

 

“Hm,” said Gaeren. “You are so quiet…”

 

“Oh,” I said, “I was only being quiet because Lindwen was still around. She dislikes me, you see, though I have no idea why, and—”

 

“I will call you Tíniel,” she said. “One name is as good as any other, _I_ think, and Naithion thinks so too. And you had better have a name sooner rather than later.”

 

“Would you not use it, please?” I asked. The name sat wrong, and the meaning sat wrong, and though I could not remember my real name I was sure it must have been better than this new one.

 

She frowned. “Perhaps you will like better the one my husband devises. But even if you are not truly a quiet girl I see no reason why you should dislike the name. My name means nothing to me, and Naithion’s means nothing to him, and nobody here thinks anything of their names, really. They are nothing but ways to call people and not get the whole clearing.”

 

“I think something of this name,” I said. “Maybe your husband will come up with a better one. Even if you resort to shouting in my general direction I think I will get the idea, and if the other people around here do not understand then that will be their problem.”

 

“You are not quiet at all,” she said, frowning more, her forehead starting to fold in on itself. “But you will do well to get used to doing as you are told, and I will not change the name.”

 

“It will never fit,” I said.

 

“Then I suppose we are in some sort of agreement, at the least,” she said, and the look on her face made it clear that she was not going to say any more about the matter.

 

“Where will I be staying?” I asked.

 

“Oh,” she said, “follow me.”

 

She walked to the back of the house and opened the door to the new room I had noticed. I ran up behind her and looked into it.

 

The walls were the pale yellow of unpainted wood, and the furniture was, too. There was a bed, and its green sheets were the only thing in the room that was not wood-colored.

 

“Were you planning to paint?” I asked.

 

“Varnish, perhaps,” she said. “Who needs anything else?” I remembered with something just un-faint enough to be horror that everything inside the house had been stained various shades of shiny brown, and the outside had weathered to grey.

 

“Oh,” I said, thinking about how she had acted when I had not liked the name. “Is paint more expensive than varnish, perhaps?”

 

“Paint is too heavy for farmers’ walls,” she said. “And if we want for color, we need only go outside, and look up at the green leaves.”

 

“There are colors other than green,” I said, as quietly as I could, because it did not seem like the sort of thing that should stay locked up in my thoughts.

 

“Look at your hair, then,” said Gaeren, starting to leave. “It is the farthest thing possible from green.”

 

“At least,” I whispered to the empty room, “it is not the color of _dirt.”_

 

“Did you say something?” asked Gaeren, stopping in the doorway and smiling sweetly.

 

I turned around and smiled back. “What should I call you? Will your name do?”

 

“You could call me mother, if you like—”

 

_“No!”_

 

“Well!” she said. “It was nothing but a suggestion. Call me ma’am, then, or my name if you must.”

 

To be honest, I would probably have forgotten her name by the time I woke up the next morning anyway. “Ma’am, then,” I said seriously. “I will remember.”

 

She laughed a little, which, though it was understandable considering who I was, I did not like very much. “No promises there!” she said, and left me alone in the new yellow room.

 

Fin


End file.
